Posted by Rick [Rick] on April 07, 1999 at 15:24:10 {HTWDI6pmYgctB9oBIfGcFMFBt36Xyc}:
In Reply to: *Was the Pastor a Pansy? posted by J.H. on April 07, 1999 at 14:24:04:
That was an educational lesson in history you presented. I only speak for myself and nobody else in stating that if we as Jehovah's Witnesses are afraid of our history, and cannot deal with it, then there is no religion we will ever accept. Even the Bible's history is frought with bloodshed and debate about God's role versus man's misinterpretation of God's will. Healthy debate helps ourselves to formulate our own opinions on historical matters. Knowledge of history will arm those who seek truth with wisdom to avoid repeating the same mistakes. I see no problem with JW history discussed if presented in a scholarly fashion on our forum and discussed like respectable historians would discuss it. Afterall, if our history was pristine would anyone find the topic of "reform" of interest?
Rick
To those seeking to remain in the organization and are staunchly opposed to reform
``Only strong personalities can endure
history, the weak ones are extinguished by it.''
(Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher. Thoughts out of Season, pt. 2, sct. 5 (1874).)
``Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
it.''
(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Life of Reason, "Reason in Common Sense," ch. 12 (1905-6). William L. Shirer used this quote as an epigraph in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
(1959).)
``Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.''
(Anonymous.)
To those seeking to remain in the organization and seeking reform
``We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall
back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.''
(Jos� Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), Spanish essayist, philosopher. The Revolt of the Masses, ch. 10 (1930).)
``History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made
manifest in time.''
(Henry Miller (1891-1980), U.S. author. Plexus, ch. 12 (1949).)
``A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.''
(T. S. Eliot
(1888-1965), Anglo-American poet, critic. Little Gidding, pt. 5, in Four Quartets.)
``Acts themselves alone are history. . . . Tell me the acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning
and your rubbish! All that is not action is not worth reading.''
(William Blake (1757-1827), English poet, painter, engraver. A Descriptive Catalogue, no. 5 (1809; repr. in Complete Writings, ed. by Geoffrey Keynes,
1957).)
To those who left the organization and use history to condemn the present-day Watchtower Society
``The historian's job is to aggrandize, promoting accident to inevitability and innocuous circumstance to
portent.''
(Peter Conrad (b. 1948), Australian critic, author. The Art of the City, ch. 1 (1984).)
``Historian. A broad-gauge gossip.''
(Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), U.S. author. The Devil's Dictionary
(1881-1906).)
``It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's
judgement.''
(Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Advancement of Learning, bk. 2 (1605).)
``You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and
formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.''
(Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), German novelist, poet. Father Jacobus, in The Glass Bead Game,
ch. 4 (1943; tr. 1960).)